Black-On-Black Crime

BY FIELDING GREAVES

A recent columnist in Marin's daily, pushing either a racist
or a witless liberal guilt trip agenda, whined that blacks are
only 12 percent of the U.S. population but they comprise over
half the population on Death row in our nation's prisons.

He apparently never bothered to research the subject. If he
had, he would have learned that although they are only 12 percent
of the population, the most recent (1995) FBI report on arrest
data indicates that of offenders for whom race was known, blacks
committed some 53 percent of our murders, nearly half our rapes,
59 percent of our robberies, and 38 percent of aggravated assaults.
Those percentages have been more or less consistent over the
past decade.

Most of that was black-on-black crime. Of murder victims for
whom race was known, 49 percent was black, nearly all killled
by other blacks. One wonders if there is something in the psyche
of blacks that makes them more disposed to killing. For example,
across the entire sweep of black Africa, there's not one black
nation that is not now, or was not until very recently, engulfed
in a wave of inter-tribal genocide, or of mass killings of its
people by their own despotic government.

It is blacks, especially in poor black neighborhoods, who
are the chief victims of this wave of violence perpetrated by
black criminals. For example, about 49 percent of U.S. murder
victims are black, over 95 percent of them killed by other blacks.
It's popular in liberal media circles to name guns as the biggest
killer of young black males. Wrong. The biggest killer of young
black males is other young black males.

For years our gutless liberal media have been too cowardly
to address the issue of black crime. Under pressure from black
leaders, the media years ago caved in and stopped identifying
the race of the criminal in their news reports on crimes whenever
the alleged criminals were black. Sometimes they got around that
extorted self-censorship by publishing a mug shot. But it's only
recently, although still seldom, that they've begun to identify
blacks as perpetrators within the text of news articles. They've
never had any compunction about identifying whites as criminals.

For years it was only Ebony which had dared to discuss the
issue, devoting one entire issue of the magazine to "Black-on-Black
Crime." The rest, fearing charges of racism, carefully skirted
the issue. The long taboo against speaking of black crime has
only recently been broken as the media in general gradually begins
discussing the facts of black crime.

It's especially revealing when a black leader such as Jesse
Jackson can admit being embarrassed when, walking at night and
hearing footsteps behind him, he nervously looks back and then
feels a sudden sense of relief upon seeing that the person behind
him is white.

It is blacks, especially poor blacks, who are the worst victims
of black violent crime. Sadly, the government exacerbates the
problem. Witless gun-phobes like Senator Boxer, Representative
Schumer, and President Clinton pretend to fight crime by seeking
to ban inexpensive handguns. Such arms are the only affordable
means many of society's less affluent members have for the protection
of themselves and their families against the vicious criminals
who prey upon them.

Such disreputable gun-grabbing politicians follow the infamous
credo of Connecticut's late Senator Thomas Dodd, author of the
Gun Control Act of 1968 (which he copied-in many places verbatim-from
Adolf Hitler's 1938 Nazi gun law). Dodd's credo, that "gun control
is the sweetest gravy train of free publicity ever invented,"
has been the guiding motivation behind many gun laws in recent
decades. Instead of serving in public office, such political
hacks should be standing trial for aiding and abetting violent
career criminals through their efforts to disarm the victims
of crime.

One need consider only Washington, D.C, with its population
over 70 percent black. D.C. gun laws have banned handguns, and
idiotically require that all other guns be kept not only unloaded,
but also disassembled. Its gun laws were directly responsible
for Washington's murder rate skyrocketing to over 80 per 100,000
population, nine times the national average, making Washington
the murder capital of the nation.

Washington's former black police chief said the D.C. gun law
was wrong and should be repealed. Recently another high ranking
D.C. police officer, the president of the Black Police Officers
Association, said the law was counter-productive, and he pleaded
for its repeal so that D.C. residents might purchase handguns
for their own protection.

It's worth noting that President Clinton recently commented,
speaking on the abortion issue, that anyone who interfered with
a woman exercising her constitutional rights is a terrorist.
By President Clinton's own terms, it follows that anyone interfering
with the right of Washington residents, or of any other Americans,
to exercise their constitutional right to arms must likewise
be considered a terrorist. That includes those notorious terrorists
Sen. Barbara Boxer, Rep. Charles Schumer, and President Bill
Clinton himself.